Author event with Christina Baker Kline, author of A Piece of the World

Parnassus Books is thrilled to welcome Christina Baker Kline as she reads from and signs the paperback edition of A Piece of the World.

In her new novel, Kline turns her attention to another little-known part of America’s history: the story of Christina Olson, the complex woman and real-life muse Andrew Wyeth portrayed in his 1948 masterpiece Christina’s World. This iconic American painting — which features a mysterious woman in a pink dress sitting in a field, gazing at a weathered house in the distance — hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as part of their permanent collection.

In A Piece of the World, Kline vividly imagines the life of Christina Olson. Born in the same remote farmhouse in Cushing, Maine that her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by a degenerative muscular disorder that made it difficult to walk, Christina seemed destined to lead an uneventful life. Her fate changed the day 22-year-old Andrew Wyeth knocked on her front door.

Told in evocative and lucid prose, A Piece of the World is a story about the burdens and blessings of family history, and how artist and muse can come together to forge a new and timeless legacy.

Christina Baker Klineis the author of five novels, including the #1 New York Times bestselling Orphan Train. Her other novels include Bird in Hand, The Way Life Should Be, Desire Lines and Sweet Water. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, Psychology Today, among other places. She lives outside of New York City and on the coast of Maine.